Age is just a number - the women's World Cup XI of seniors

Even in a side boasting Australia's depth, Alyssa Healy - their captain, wicketkeeper and prolific run-scorer - will leave a sizeable hole when she leaves. After a year fraught with injury setbacks, Healy believes she has more to give beyond this World Cup but has ruled out playing at the 2028 Olympics or after that. Anyone who remembers her tearing up the run-scoring charts at the 2022 edition - with 509 runs averaging 56.55 and two centuries in the knockout phase, including the 170 that broke England hearts in the final - will savour seeing her at this tournament one last time.

Challenging "ageist" notions was firmly on Suzie Bates' agenda on the eve of the last T20 World Cup final where she, Sophie Devine and Lea Tahuhu lifted the trophy. And here they all are again, flying the New Zealand flag for players on the other side of 35. Bates was Player of the Tournament in 2013, her second of what will be five World Cup appearances.

Having thought the 2017 and 2022 editions might be her last, 38-year-old Bates recently said, "never say never", but she is fairly certain that this will be it. "I feel like there's no milestones on my list anymore," she recently told ESPNcricinfo. "As you get older and you know you're near the end, you honestly do go into every game wanting to contribute to a win, and it's as simple as that."

Skipper Chamari Athapaththu has long shouldered a heavy load for Sri Lanka as their standout allrounder and captain. Now she carries a self-imposed burden on her 35-year-old shoulders, the desire to take her team to a maiden women's World Cup semi-final "before I retire".

"If we can get there, we can figure out the next steps," she told at the captains' call on Friday. "But even getting there is big."

It's been eight years since Sri Lanka featured at a 50-over World Cup and, if Athapaththu can rediscover the year-long run of form she enjoyed from June 2023 - three unbeaten centuries, including 195 not out against South Africa - it would be a return to remember.

If this is Harmanpreet Kaur's final 50-over World Cup, what a farewell party it would be should India win a maiden senior women's title, at home. Like many of her contemporaries, 36-year-old Harmanpreet is contesting her fifth ODI World Cup, although it is her first as captain.

The architect of one of the most memorable innings in women's World Cup history - her 171 not out off 115 balls in the 2017 semi-final - Harmanpreet has an excellent track record at the tournament. Three of her seven ODI centuries have been in World Cups, where she averages 51.52 compared to her overall average of 37.37. Her determination to take the weight of expectation off her team suggests that personal milestones are, however, at the back of her mind.

"I just want to go there and enjoy, and play my best cricket," she said. "That's what I've been telling myself and my team… it's all about not taking too much pressure."

As she did before the T20 World Cup, Sophie Devine has been upfront about her future from the start. Last year, she announced she would relinquish the T20 captaincy after what turned out to be a glorious campaign in the UAE. This time, she's retiring from 50-overs cricket at the end of the tournament. So what would it mean to walk away with the double?

"It'd be pretty special," Devine told ESPNcricinfo, adding her reasons for announcing her ODI retirement beforehand. "A part of the reason, similar to last year at the World Cup, was getting it out there nice and early so that I can just focus on enjoying it, being present with the group and get the focus on playing really good cricket and hopefully bring home a trophy."

At her best with the bat, Devine is pure destruction. With the ball, she recently ended the Hundred in the top-five wicket-takers' list with 13 at an economy rate of 6.70 in an evergreen performance for Southern Brave.

Heather Knight has faced a tough road to reach her fourth World Cup. She lost the England captaincy after a bleak Ashes tour of Australia and then suffered a serious hamstring injury at the start of the home summer and spent four months undergoing painstaking rehabilitation work.

In her first outing since, she scored 41 off 48 balls in a warm-up game against New Zealand and 37 off 47 in another against India. Knight's reliability with the bat will be key to an England side still in transition under new head coach Charlotte Edwards and captain Nat Sciver-Brunt. With her 35th birthday still three months away, it's not inconceivable that Knight could do a Bates in 2029 but time will tell.

Her team-mates are barely joking when they lovingly refer to Marizanne Kapp as the stern matriarch of the team. But her conduct on and off the pitch over the course of a career spanning five World Cups in 16 years commands their utmost respect.

Kapp made her international debut at the 2009 event in Australia, scoring 7 and 0 in her two matches and going wicketless from the three overs she bowled. But from those humble beginnings rose the fiercest of competitors. She had her best World Cup with the bat at the next edition in India, scoring a century and 61, and took her only ODI five-for at the 2022 event against England.

Since then, she has racked up three more ODI centuries outside World Cups, including away to India last year and in Pakistan this month. In T20s, Kapp has consistently had one of the top economy rates in all three editions of the WPL. She now has an entire side wanting to go one better than their previous two runners-up results at the T20 World Cup for her.

It's hard to imagine an Australia side without Ellyse Perry, such is her longevity and supreme athleticism. With this year's tournament set to end the day before her 35th birthday, she is a player you might see still running around aged 39, especially given that she recently signed a fresh three-year contract with Sydney Sixers.

Her best World Cup bowling figures came at Mumbai's Brabourne Stadium, against West Indies in 2013, and she averages significantly higher with the bat compared to overall in ODIs (56.08 vs 49.19), although a century eludes her at this tournament.

That aside, after a career spanning 18 years and counting, having made her debut at the age of 16, what more would be left to achieve if Australia defend their title here? An Olympic Games gold? Surely. A World Cup title hat-trick? Maybe.

A swing bowler who has made no secret of this being her last 50-over World Cup, Megan Schutt returns to the place she made her tournament debut - in just her third ODI. Schutt took her joint-best World Cup bowling figures during that tournament - 3 for 40 against New Zealand, which she repeated against the same opposition in Bristol four years later.

"I've no intentions on hanging around for another four years," Schutt said. "Being able to have the chance to finish an ODI World Cup in India when that's where I've kind of started my career is really cool. The stars have aligned in some ways and so obviously coming away with a win is the ultimate goal, but I really just want to enjoy it, absorb the enormity of it all and being in a country that's obviously cricket-mad and where my career began hopefully will bring some success."

Sri Lanka's 39-year-old left-arm spinner Inoka Ranaweera has played 164 white-ball games for her country and boasts three four-wicket hauls, two of them in ODIs, and one of those was against India during their 2022 tour.

Ranaweera missed this year's tour of New Zealand but earned a recall for the home tri-series with India and South Africa, where she had steady if unremarkable figures as 20-year-old off-spinner Dewmi Vihanga emerged as the future of Sri Lanka's slow-bowling ranks.

This will be Ranaweera's third World Cup and first since 2017, where she was captain, with her team missing out on qualifying in 2022.

With Athapaththu and Ranaweera, the 40-year-old Udeshika Prabodhani boosts Sri Lanka's bid to rival New Zealand for players plying their trade into their late 30s and beyond.

A left-arm seamer, Prabodhani was second behind only young spinner Kavisha Dilhari as Sri Lanka's leading bowlers at last year's Asia Cup. She returned to Sri Lanka's World Cup squad after nearly a year battling a hamstring problem, during which time Malki Madara made her debut, allowing Sri Lanka to build balance between youth and experience. Her wily inswinger has proved problematic for opposition batters, just ask Mithali Raj about Sri Lanka's maiden ODI win against India, which knocked the hosts out of the 2013 World Cup.

In case Perry, Harmanpreet, Knight or someone else exercises their powers of longevity and play on next time, Lea Tahuhu makes the squad as 12th woman.

She has just turned 35 but she keeps finding herself grouped with New Zealand's trio of "grandmas" - their term, not ours.

Fast bowler Tahuhu fought her way back into the White Ferns' central contract list for 2023-24 after missing out the previous year. She accounted for Smriti Mandhana, Yastika Bhatia and Deepti Sharma in the recent second ODI against India.